Why we went to Brussels

Brussels was a very spontaneous trip. Coming from Australia, flights to other states (let alone other countries are ridiculously, freaking expensive. Why? No idea! But European countries are insanely close together and flights and accommodation (the ones we were looking at anyway, but I’ll get to that) were cheap in Brussels so we literally asked ourselves “Why not?”. With no good reason against it, we booked a trip to Brussels with Ryanair about a week before we flew out!

Taking a backpack/carryon bag is the cheapest and easiest way to see a city for a weekend. We flew out on Thursday night from Manchester and arrived in Brussels fairly late. One thing that you should know is that when you fly with Ryanair, you fly into an airport which is in the middle of nowhere (like most of their airports). Charleroi Airport is not near Brussels. It is one hour away from Brussels, and when the coach (€31 return) drops you in Brussels but still a 20 minute taxi ride away from the centre of Brussels…you know you’re in for a long night.

We booked the Theater Hotel in Brussels which was about a 10 minute walk away from Grand Place and the central tourist area of Brussels.It was clean, cheap and central…but that’s about all that I can say for it. Prostitutes literally lined the streets outside and after reading the Trip Advisor page for it after we got back, it turns out the street is also almost entirely brothels. So that’s always interesting! Luckily the three of us stuck together and were usually so tired by the evenings that we really only used it as a place to sleep.

As I said – clean, cheap and central! Also, the photos on the website might possibly match what some of the rooms look like, but ours definitely did not look like that. Very, very basic and not modern in the slightest. When you’re on a student budget and travelling on weekends for fun, you really can’t complain.

So without further ado, I’m going to separate my next couple of blogs about Brussels into three main topics so that I can spam photos and text without boring you too, too much – Food, The Atomium and general Belgian architecture. We had a blast in Belgium and I hope that my next few posts will give you a little more insight into the amazing time we spent there!

For a bit more about what we did, check out my Brussels video in the previous post HERE!